DAILY PILOT

Rap video gets the marketing party started for $45-million Balboa Peninsula mansion

The party’s on at 1813 Bay Ave. in Newport Beach in the marketing video “Teach Me How to Duffy.” (YouTube/The Smith Group)

Whoever buys 1813 Bay Ave. in Newport Beach will literally be living large enough to tie up eight Duffy boats on its private dock.

At least that’s what the rap song accompanying the home’s listing says.

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The house, expensive even by Newport standards, hit the market Monday with a $45-million list price and a marketing video that goes beyond the usual walk-through and aerial footage. Tim Smith of the Smith Group, a specialist in coastal Orange County luxury properties, connected with professional filmmakers, a cast of social media personalities and the artists behind the viral 2010 party anthem “Teach Me How to Dougie” to create a takeoff called “Teach Me How to Duffy,” which aims to show potential buyers the lifestyle that awaits in the newly built, never-lived-in Balboa Peninsula mansion.

Smith, who regularly commissions creative, narrative-driven videos to highlight his listings, said he wanted to create “energy around the listing” with “Teach Me How to Duffy,” which was produced in less than two weeks on a $50,000 budget.

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Over a metronomic beat, social media figures Myles Erlick, Trevor Flanagan-Tordjman and Zachary Burker join original “Dougie” artists Mr. Swag and Smoove da General of the Inglewood-based group Cali Swag District as they rap and frolic at the mansion, around the Lido area and in a Duffy boat within an armada of the small, canopy-topped electric pleasure craft that are ubiquitous in Newport Harbor.

The lyrics are packed with Newport-isms — “pop a grape/eat some cheese/no wake/5 miles in the harbor, please” — and the video doesn’t reveal the song’s true subject, the house, until about 2½ minutes into the four-minute production.

This is where Smith — clad in a blazer and pocket square and backed by the video’s cast — raps about the 13,000-square-foot home’s five bedrooms, game room, gym and wet bars, infinity pool and solar panels. He said he didn’t plan to have a rap cameo — “that’s not really my brand” — but took only two takes to complete the scene, which took him past a centerpiece 1,100-gallon aquarium.

The house also features eight bathrooms, a five-car garage, a glass elevator, two gourmet kitchens, an executive office, a craft room, a theater, a sauna and a private beach, plus design elements like a “floating” staircase.

Real estate agent Tim Smith raps in “Teach Me How to Duffy,” his marketing video for a 13,000-square-foot, five-bedroom mansion on the Balboa Peninsula in Newport Beach. (YouTube/The Smith Group)

The YouTube channel for Smith’s group features more than 200 videos, including an “MTV Cribs”-style riff for a $14.7-million Italianate villa in Corona del Mar and another that follows a nude man enjoying a mansion in Newport Coast. Zillow says that one sold for $8.9 million last year.

“Teach Me How to Duffy” has attracted nationwide attention from potential buyers, Smith said. He has a showing scheduled for this weekend.